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In Arizona, they’re fighting white supremacy.
At least, that’s true at Arizona State University.
As reported by The Daily Wire, the school’s associate dean has penned a 358-page book about it.
The title: “Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom.”
You know that whole scholastic-system-of-scoring thing? According to Professor Asao Inoue, teachers should toss it for the sake of greater equity.
Better: kids being awarded for their efforts.
Not cool to consider: the quality of students’ writing.
That would include, if I adequately understand, in writing class.
It sounds as if Asao’s got a penchant for Pass/Fail:
This book focuses on one kind of grading contract, one that calculates final course grades purely by the labor students complete, not by any judgments of the quality of their writing. While the qualities of student writing is still at the center of the classroom and feedback, it has no bearing on the course grade.
Per TDW, the professor’s perfectly crystal on his principles:
Near the beginning of the document, the author admits that the theory of “labor-based” grading is rooted in critical race theory. Critical race theory is the idea that America is rooted in racism as are the systems of modern American society.
So grading? It’s grating:
Critical race theory contributed to Inoue’s idea that ranking things is a system rooted in racism. Because grading is a form of ranking, grading must also be a racist idea. In his book, Inoue dubbed grading and the education system writ large “racist” for their connections to ranking.
Some of you may wish your teachers had been antiracist back when it counted.
If Inoue’s accurate, they were effectively white supremacists:
Ranking is a part of a much longer racist, and White supremacist, tradition in Western intellectual history. Ranking has been deeply embedded in racist thinking, discourses, and logics, mainly because it has been deployed as a way to justify a number of racist, empirical, and colonial projects over the last four hundred years.
At least now you know they were wrong.
But not everyone does — hence, the poisonous punch persists:
Education at all levels has been and still is a part of these racist projects…
Hey, I just remembered — this guy’s the dean of a college.
Back to the book, it’s time to rid the Grand Canyon State of the crappy crater of Caucasian conditionalism:
Grading literacy performances by a single standard for so-called quality is racist and promotes white language supremacy.
Singular standard, you’ve been fingered:
Because all grading and assessment exist within systems that uphold singular, dominant standards that are racist, and White supremacist when used uniformly. This problem is present in any grading system that incorporates a standard, no matter who is judging, no matter the particulars of the standard.
So what’s the bottom line where grading’s concerned?
To hear Asao tell it, the malignant meritocracy is “white language supremacy.”
Lay it out, fella:
“The traditional purposes and methods used for grading writing turn out to be de facto racist and White supremacist. Grading by a standard, thus, is how White language supremacy is perpetuated in schools.”
Just when you think the world can’t get more racist, you realize the way you formulated that thought — via language composed in your mind — was racist.
America, we’ve got a whole lot of work to do.
Read the book and discover how to go about it, ’cause effort alone won’t do the trick.
Or will it?
For any who doubt Asao’s ideas, the author offers a personal account:
I lived in an explicitly racist world. The racism was very present to me, During my Freshman year of high school, I got an A in honors French and every other class I took, yet received a B (not a B+) in English, not honors English, regular English. How was this possible? What was I doing wrong? Apparently, nothing. It was me, my habitus. I knew this but didn’t want to admit, admit that my language and body were being judged together.
That sounds explicitly awful.
-ALEX
See more pieces from me:
Chinese Checkers: Anyone Flying Into China Can Now Be Forced to Get an Anal Swab
Find all my RedState work here.
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